'BABYLON THE GREAT' IS ISRAEL

By Rev. Ted Pike
4 Feb 13

Editor's Note:

In my latest article (Good vs. Poor Anti-Zionist Leadership) I describe how the evangelical church has been deceived by the same pharisaic system, Babylon the Great, which came out of Babylon in the several centuries B.C. and took control of the Jewish people in Palestine.

The specter of Babylon the Great looms very high in Scripture, particularly in Revelation 17 and 18. Since we are living in the days of its spectacular emergence, it is vital that every Christian and anti-Zionist realize how powerfully Scripture proves that modern-day international control is none other than "the Great Harlot," Israel.

In this re-printed article, we are reminded that Babylon the Great cannot possibly be Rome, New York, etc. but only Israel, the archetypal bride of Jehovah (Ezek.16) who committed, and still commits, spiritual whoredom with the nations.

In the mystical book of Revelation, the apostle John
sees a scarlet woman called “Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots
and Abominations of the Earth.” She is drunk on the blood of
Christians and rides a many-horned and -headed beast. John was told
this woman symbolized a city that would one day rule and corrupt the
world. Who is this woman? Does she exist today?

The answer lies thousands of years in history, in a story of redemption,
love and betrayal – recounted in Ezekiel 16. This stern yet tender
allegory tells how God rescued Israel from death as a rejected infant
and chose her for His spiritual bride – not because of her goodness
but out of His compassion. From the furnace of Egyptian bondage, the
tiny Hebrew nation burst forth. She plagued Pharaoh, crossed the divided
sea and finally lived under Moses’ leadership in the desert of
Sinai. There God entered the covenant of spiritual marriage with His
bride. But that happiness was so brief!

[Israel] you trusted in your beauty and played the
harlot because of your fame and poured out your harlotry on every
passer-by who might be willing… (Ezekiel 16:15).

From Moses through the prophets, Israel is repeatedly characterized
as an imperious whore. In more than 80 instances, she is specifically
denounced as a harlot or lewd woman. Isaiah and the other pre-exilic
prophets aimed their wrath at Jerusalem: “How the faithful city
has become a harlot!" (Isaiah 1:21) Isaiah denounced apostate
Jews as “sons of a sorceress, offspring of an adulterer and a
prostitute” (Isaiah 57:3).

Did Israel’s evil ways end in the dusty annals of the Old Testament?
No. Israel rejected Jesus Christ, her Messiah. She has never yet repented.
This compels an inevitable conclusion: Israel of today and tomorrow
is the same symbolic woman once chosen as God’s unique bride but ultimately
divorced and cast away because of her spiritual adultery. Israel is
that “Mother of Harlots” John saw on the beast of Revelation 17
and 18.

Israel was the first to marry God (Christ) and be spiritually
one with Him. Thus the position she enjoyed as a spiritual bride was
unique to her. Likewise, only apostate Israel can be the “mother” of
spiritual whoredom. When she was chosen as Christ’s bride, other
nations were disobedient like a child to its parent. Only Israel was
made capable of a wife’s infidelity. As a result, when she became
a spiritual whore, she was indelibly marked, “Mother of Harlots.” Jeremiah
said, “You had a harlot's forehead, you refused to be ashamed.” (Jer.
3:3) Other apostate systems may be spiritual harlots but only Israel
is “mother” of that scarlet sorority. And without repentance,
neither time nor wanderings can remove that epithet from her. When
Israel shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” her resurrected
spouse banished her. The Jewish people were condemned to wander like
a woman divorced for adultery, perpetually looking for that substitute
husband (anti-Christ) who would take the place of the One she killed.

The Great City

What has happened to that rejected unfaithful wife today?

Revelation 17 confronts us with the specter of a city “which
reigns over the kings of the earth.” It has physical power—more
wealth and importance than any other city—but also spiritual
power, embodying the full potentiality of human degeneracy. “What
city is like this great city?” the merchants of the earth will
wail. This city is so commercially important that when she falls, world
trade also comes crashing down. The title “the great city” is
exclusive. There will doubtless be other powerful cities in the end
time but John witnesses “the great city,” an unequaled
center of trade, political power, culture and human bondage.

And to whom does that term refer? In Revelation, “the
great city” (hey polis megaley in Greek) is used to
clearly refer to Jerusalem, capitol of the Jewish people! When the
two witnesses are killed, their dead bodies lie in the streets of “the
great city (hey polis megaley). "... Sodom and Egypt,
where also our Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8). This unmistakably
implies that powerful, corrupt Babylon and the great city “ Sodom
and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified,” are the same city… Jerusalem.

The apostle Peter, bishop of Jerusalem, also calls Jerusalem “ Babylon.” He
sends greetings from the church in Jerusalem saying, “She who
is in Babylon…sends you greetings” (1 Peter 5:13). Peter
never visited Babylon. He is clearly identifying the moral cesspool
of antiquity, Babylon, with the city where Christ was killed.

There are other reasons to believe “ Babylon the
Great” means the Jewish city. When she is destroyed, Revelation
describes the fall of this city as different from that of “Gentile” (ethnos)
cities. “And the great city was divided into three parts and
the cities of the nations (Gentiles) fell…” (Revelation
16:19) A city which is not Gentile must, of course, be Jewish.

Also, Rev. 18:24 says that the great city is guilty
for having shed the blood of the Hebrew prophets and the righteous from
the beginning of history. Jesus said the same concerning the rulers
of Jerusalem, the Pharisees: "that upon you may fall the guilt
of all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered
between the temple and the altar" (Matt. 23:35).

Yet even from earliest post-apostolic times, Christians
have misread Revelation’s prophecy. They thought Babylon the
Great meant Rome, which has traditionally been described as sitting
on seven hills. Yet the city of Rome encompasses many more than seven
hills. This is not true of Jerusalem. Ernest L. Martin, Ph.D.
points out:

the City of Jerusalem as it existed in the time of
Christ Jesus was also reckoned to be a 'City of Seven Hills.' This
fact was well recognized in Jewish circles. In the Pirke de-Rabbi
Eliezer, an 8th century A.D. midrashic [Talmudic] narrative (Section
10), the writer mentioned without commentary (showing that the understanding
was well known and required no defense) that, "Jerusalem is situated on
seven hills." ("The Seven Hills of Jerusalem” http://www.askelm.com/prophecy/p000201.htm)

Scripture also describes only one city as center
of world rule in the last days, and that is Jerusalem. Paul states
clearly that the anti-Christ will declare his one-world authority from
the temple at Jerusalem, where he proclaims he is God. (2 Thess. 2:4)
When the two witnesses resist him, they do not battle a papal anti-Christ
but “the wicked profane prince of Israel” in Jerusalem.
(Ezek. 21:25) These scriptures point to Jerusalem as the epicenter
of one-world rebellion against God; Jerusalem and Babylon are one!

Modern Judaism is Babylonian

There is more depth to the metaphor. Judaism literally is Babylonian,
more than nearly any other religion or culture. Most of its religious
laws and traditions, including the Babylonian Talmud and Zohar (Kabbalah),
come from nearly 1,600 years Jews spent on the fertile plains of Shinar.
Few religions have a deeper tradition of occult. Revelation describes
Babylon the Great deceiving the world through her “sorceries” and
the Jewish encyclopedias tell us it was Judaism which carried
Babylon’s black arts, demonology and astrology to the West.

This is as true today as ever. Jewish supremacism today
is not only erecting a political, financial, commercial world empire
but spewing filth on the nations through their movie and TV media.
(See Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish) They spearhead freedom-destroying,
pro-homosexual hate crimes laws worldwide and abet all forms of left-wing
and anti-Christ radicalism through their “civil liberties” fronts
such as ADL, ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And just as “Babylon the Great” will deceive
the world, so Jewish leaders today present a whitewashed façade
to Christians and the world – an illusion of goodness that has
never been more convincing or scrupulously maintained. The Jewish lobby
deceived Christians into unquestioning support of Israel’s ambitions
and atrocities in the Mideast; this is awesome evidence of the manipulative
influence Jewry will enjoy as we draw even closer to the end. When
Christ warned that the delusions of the end time would be so irresistible
that “even the very elect” could be deceived, He was speaking
of our day!

In our day we witness the continuing and monstrous complications
of that great divorce of Christ from his chosen bride millennia ago.
We are not simply approaching the foothills of anti-Christ. We are
in them. Through intrigue and deception, the control and commercialism
of “ Babylon the Great” has come to surround us. Yet we have
not perceived it. We have, in fact, assisted it.

Babylon is now.

How should Christians respond to the fact that Israel
and Babylon are one? Jesus tells us the answer. "Come out of her,
my people, that you may not participate in her sins, and that you may
not receive of her plagues, for her sins have piled up as high as heaven…" (Rev.
18:4-5)